More than half-a-centurty ago The Economist published an essay Cyril Northcote Parkinson that coined the adage "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".
From this he developed a mathematical equation which described the rate that bureaucracies expand over time. The prime example he used to support and illustrate this "law" was the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Britain's overseas empire declined. Parkinson explained this growth by two forces, first was that an "official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and second "officials make work for each other".
His humorous, but nevertheless valid, point was that the numbers employed in a bureaucracy rises by 5%-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done".
All of which brings me neatly to a report by the Commons Public Administration Committee said the number of ministers had doubled during the past century.
In 1900, when we ran a global empire, there were just 60, today there are 119.
Despite devolved government for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the privatisation of many parts of government.
Many appointments are based more on political reward rather than the need to fill the position, and their number should be cut "by as much as a third".
We have the ludicrous situation where civil servants are left "making work" for some junior ministers, because they had so little work to do.
This is absurd.
That is why we Lib Dems have called for a a 30% cut in the number of Welsh MPs, 28% in Northern Ireland, 20% in England, and 14% in Scotland.
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